Tony Iommi releases behind-the-scenes footage for his “World Alone” music video

Tony Iommi, the renowned guitarist for Black Sabbath, has released behind-the-scenes film from the creation of the music video for “World Alone,” the lead single from his upcoming solo album “From The Dark,” which will be released by BMG on October 23, as per Blabbermouth. On July 29, “World Alone” made its debut at a unique worldwide streaming event held in Birmingham, England, Iommi‘s homeland. The famed Black Sabbath Bridge spanning the canal, which was opened as a civic memorial to the legendary band in 2019, was just a short distance away. The powerful rock operatics of renowned Norwegian vocalist Jorn Lande top off the thunderous rock song “World Alone,” which races forward on a bombardment of flying guitar riffs and solos supported by a pounding rhythm section.

Tony Iommi is a heavy rock icon whose inventive, detuned, gloomy riffs are thought to have served as a model for hundreds of bands who came after. Tony, a left-hander who was born in Birmingham, England, on February 19, 1948, took up the guitar as a teenager after being influenced by bands like Hank Marvin & The Shadows. Iommi had a terrible accident at a sheet metal shop where a machine cut off the tips of his right hand’s fingers, almost ending his musical career too soon. He thought his days of playing the guitar were over, until a buddy introduced him to Django Reinhardt, a guitarist who lost two fingers in a campfire accident involving a gipsy caravan.

Tony was motivated by this to try the six-string again, attaching soft plastic tips to the tips of his fingers. He performed with a number of blues-based rock groups by 1967, including Polka Tulk (later renamed Earth and then Black Sabbath), which included drummer Bill Ward, singer John “Ozzy” Osbourne, and bassist Terry “Geezer” Butler.

He made his own thimbles out of an old Fairy Liquid bottle and “melted it down, got a hot soldering iron and shaped it like a finger” to protect and extend his injured fingers while playing left-handed. He also cut parts of a leather jacket to cover his new homemade prosthetic, which led to two technical issues. First, he tended to put a lot of pressure on the strings because the thimbles made it difficult for him to feel them. Second, he found light-gauge guitar strings to make bending strings simpler because he had trouble with them. But until Picato Strings started producing light-gauge guitar strings in 1970–1971, Iommi remembers that such strings weren’t produced at the time, so he used banjo strings instead.